Tuesday
Jan182011
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Republican probe off again
Jan 18, 2011 Climate: Mann The back-and-forth over the proposed global warming hearings in the US House of Representatives appear to be off again. According to The Hill, although a New Yorker profile of new House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Darrell Issa, suggested that he was keen to do an investigation, a statement yesterday by Issa's spokesman said that no such inquiry would take place.
Issa spokesman Kurt Bardella on Monday pushed back against the depiction of Issa’s climate plans in The New Yorker piece, claiming that Issa had been asked about the issue rather than raising it as a priority.
“We are not pursuing a Climategate probe,” Bardella told The Hill on Monday morning.
Reader Comments (24)
That's a bloody shame.
My concern at the mid-term elections was that the rhetoric about reversing the warmist agenda with strong action and reviews of the science was just a sop to the voters who have had enough and when the new guys get to Washington the guys behind the scam would make sure that nothing would change.
Maybe now's not exactly the time to probe climate science anyway. I doubt Climategate has much left to give in terms of winning arguments. There needs to be a new chink in the armour exposed. We also need to move away from the hottest year ever claims, even though they're clearly manufactured.
What they should do, is marshall the arguments and evidence so that they can act quickly when a new scandal is exposed.
We'll see about that.
Steve
Do you know something we don't?
This decision, to not investigate Climategate, was made because such investigation was deemed to be more appropriate for the Committee on Science and Technology than the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. I was told that by a senior staffer on the Oversight Committee, in December: the reason given was that the Science Committee has more expertise in science. Effectively then, the question of whether to investigate was transfered from one committee to the other. As of December, the Science Committee had not decided whether they were going to investigate.
OT, but this is well worth a read, IMO:
Link
http://www.c-ville.com/index.php?cat=141404064432695&ShowArticle_ID=12681701113900458
For his part, Mann hopes that UVA will continue to defend his documents. He comments by e-mail: “There is substantial case law defending scientists and academics against such thinly-veiled attempts to suppress scientific inquiry by harassing individual scientists. I suspect that UVA, as other great universities have in the past, will respect that tradition and stand up against these transparent attempts not just to bully me, but to thwart the progress of science.”
you have to really watch the pea under the walnut on this one....
http://www.c-ville.com/index.php?cat=141404064432695&ShowArticle_ID=12681701113900458
"The problem with the Mann graph is that it in effect nullified some significant archaeologically and historically known information, the medieval warming, which saw cattle farming in Greenland, the little ice age and the 20th century cooling, the last being a cause for international concern only 40 or so years ago.
At the time there were the usual alarmist predictions that go with such phenomena. It's doubtful that the names McIntyre and McKitrick will ring a bell. McIntyre and McKitrick, and others, used the same proxy data to show otherwise, although in all reconstructions there is undoubtedly an upturn at the end of projections. So there is some argument for accepting the general conclusion that in the past three centuries or so there has been a notable rise in average temperatures. All that the IPCC could add was that there was a high probability that this was man-induced"
second quote http://www.trinidadexpress.com/commentaries/The_third_hockey_stick-114042399.html
The question to ask is,
"What Government's interests are fulfilled by revealing that the science behind CAGW is flawed and there's no real problem"?
Look at any Western Government, they're all deeply in the red financially, they all desperately need more tax revenues.
The Chinese are quite happy to sell us more windmills & parts thereof.
What "solution" to CAGW have they all come to accept?
Taxes of one sort or another.
Pop the CAGW bubble, pop goes the rationale behind the various "green" taxes. This then leaves the various Governments the problem of either accepting that there's no justification anymore for these taxes and scrapping them, thus leaving a big hole in the revenue streams, or trying to keep the taxes and admitting that they're just that, taxes, with nothing to do with environmental issues.
The money stream to various "developing countries" will also have to be either junked or justified in another way.
The Chinese lose their windmill business.
The Lib/Dems could have had a clause in their election manefesto to launch a full, independant investigation into "Climate Change", promising to call Steve McIntyre and our own Bishop as star witnesses. Would they have honoured that promise now they have the opportunity to do so?
In the words of General McAuliffe - Nuts!
James P
Another excellent contextual discussion piece worth bookmarking, more on the political side, written during the Copenhagen Conference
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=409454
@ Frosty
attempts to suppress scientific inquiry by harassing individual scientists
I agree that Mann should not have been doing that. I wonder if he agrees that science needs to be protected from him?
Thank you, Pharos - a good read. I particularly liked the image of “wildebeest fleeing a non-existent lion”. The comparison with medical faddism seemed apposite too, if a little depressing, as medical dogma is notoriously difficult to reverse, as anyone who has been prescribed Zantac for stomach ulcers will confirm. I don’t expect AGW to go down without a long fight, though, however many weapons they lose. Monty Python’s Black Knight comes to mind...
Science should be protected from the whole tree ring circus IMO JR.
"tree ring circus"
LOL! V good.
>“We are not pursuing a Climategate probe,” Bardella told The Hill on Monday morning.
You mean he communicates directly with our Bishop?
I suppose he means Congress, though - shame!
Chesterton would have fun with this.
@Pharos
@James P
I too found the article well worth reading as are many of the comments that follow; that signed "RW" particularly caught my attention. Could this be Rupert Wyndham who wrote a number of caustic letters to the BBC and the Royal Society after Climategate? The caustic style looks very similar.
What is going on?
I am the least likely conspiracy theorist that you can imagine. Retired anaesthetist of the old school.
But really, whitewash UK inquiries, changing Va law to frustrate Cuccenelli, the complete absence of investigative journalism from the MSM (we understand the BBC and its pension fund) plus the connivance of high profile 'political' scientists - I still lose sleep over Brian Cox.
Big, really big, money and power is lurking in the background - I hate being considered a fool.
Sorry for the rant but I'm becoming increasingly infected by my very clever 23 yr old chemistry graduate who is 'into' conspiracies in a major way.
Oh good, Blair's letters have not been released - quite right (sarc.)
"Blair's letters have not been released"
And, as ever, people will assume even worse unless/until the truth emerges. Serve him right, too.
John in France
Tks for flagging that RW comment, which I had missed. And I enjoyed his letter, if it is he, to the Royal Society, which I found here
http://climaterealists.com/attachments/database/Royal%20Society%20Letter.pdf
this does not surprise me in the slightest.
in queensland australia, we have a situation right now where the State Govt's water policy is based strictly on drought-proofing, when we in fact have moved back to La Nina conditions which might last decades.
the Opposition (Tony Abbott's party) is saying nothing about this.
7 Dec 2009: Sydney Morning Herald: Abbott's climate change policy is bullshit
by Malcolm Turnbull (who is from the same party as Abbott)
Second, as we are being blunt, the fact is that Tony and the people who put him in his job do not want to do anything about climate change. They do not believe in human caused global warming. As Tony observed on one occasion "climate change is crap" or if you consider his mentor, Senator Minchin, the world is not warming, its cooling and the climate change issue is part of a vast left wing conspiracy to deindustrialise the world...
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/abbotts-climate-change-policy-is-bullshit-20091207-kdmb.html
Jan 18: Haunting the Library: Queensland Gov Global Warming Forecast Didn’t Even Mention Floods
http://hauntingthelibrary.wordpress.com/2011/01/18/official-queensland-gov-global-warming-report-drought-24-flooding-0/
yes, it is all about taxes/revenue.
Pat, I'm not sure if you are from Australia, but if you are, this is for the others who are not.
The Australian Liberal Party is a mixture of conservatives (majority) and small L liberals (minority).
Malcolm Turnbull stands head and shoulders over all the others in stature, but not necessarily in judgement. He tried to join the Labour government in passing a cap and trade CO2 bill. There was rebellion in his party and he lost leadership to Tony Abbott. Nick Minchin is the shrewdest politician in parliamnet but is regretfully retireing at the end of June. Tony Abbott is the best political fighter in parliament, which is why he is the leader now and why he almost, almost, won last year's election.
Abbott, Minchin plus some other liberals know the score, but unfortunately (or perhaps wisely as they are politicians and need votes to achieve power) - well they obviouly have decided to wait until public opinion catches up with reality - it is slowly swinging but is being held back by the MSM - paper and TV which is the warmest that you could possibly imagine.
So Australia may well be the last country on earth to throw off its (very) pale mantle and let the fresh air of truth in.
The devestating floods are causing all sorts of reactions - a few foolish politicians and others are trying to pin them on AGW, but so far they are being quietened down - it's La Nina, don't you know, seems much more prevenant, even in the MSM.
This may hasten the death on AGW here or may give it another spin of the wheel.
Time will tell.
But I sense that the tide is actually slowly turning.
(I'm tired because I'm battling to try to convince the other members of my investment group, but they still "know" that I have been hoodwinked by propaganda from Big Oil, Big coal and even Big Tobacco.)
I'll stop now because they havesent me a new bunch of PDF's to plough through and then, hopefully, to convince my friends that "It Ain't Necessarily So".
AusieDan -
yes i'm an Aussie too. kevin rudd used to call Turnbull "the minister for Goldman Sachs" which is appropriate as he is a former GS man.
with the carbon trading "scheme" in disarray, as per bish's latest thread, it's time for GS to look for a real commodity to "bubble" this time. we've had enough of the virtual ones.